mutulu shakur

Mutulu Shakur (born August 8, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland as Jeral Wayne Williams and also known as Dr. Mutulu Shakur) was a proponent of the Republic of New Afrika and a close friend of Geronimo Pratt.

Shakur is best known for planning the infamous $1.6 million robbery of a Brinks armored truck in New York in which a guard and two police officers were killed. One of his accomplices in the holdup was Kathy Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground and a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted List for 11 years. Boudin was arrested at the scene of the crime, but Shakur escaped. Shakur had been a leader of an offshoot of the Black Liberation Army. He is currently incarcerated in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons "Administrative Maximum" (ADX) Facility in Florence, Colorado.[1] His projected release date is February 10, 2016. [2] Contents [hide] 1 The robbery and arrest 2 Personal life 3 References 4 External links //

The robbery and arrest

On October 20, 1981, after six previous unsuccessful attempts to rob a Brinks truck, Shakur and five or six other men succeeded in robbing the Brinks truck, killing one of the Brinks guards. They drove to another location where they transferred the money to a U-Haul truck driven by Boudin and her husband David Gilbert. However, the transfer was seen and called in to the police, who set up a roadblock at the Tappan Zee Bridge. A shootout occurred in which two Nyack policemen were killed and Boudin was captured.

In the 1980s, he was arrested on RICO charges of bank robbery and aiding his sister, Assata Shakur, in her escape from prison on November 2, 1979. While at large, on July 23, 1982 he became the 380th person added by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was arrested February 11, 1986 in California and was subsequently found guilty of taking part in the armored-truck robbery and the prison escape.[3]

While in ADX Florence he was visited by novelist Jonathan Franzen. The visit forms part of Franzen's essay "Control Units," which is included in his book of essays How To Be Alone, published in 2002.

Personal life

Shakur is the stepfather of late rapper Tupac Shakur, and father of rapper Mopreme. Shakur was interviewed in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Tupac: Resurrection", in which he described how he wrote a "Code OF THUG LIFE" Thug Life Handbook" with Tupac, which expressed an anti-drug and anti-violence message.

Mutulu founded a New York-based organization by the name of "Dare 2 Struggle," and released a compilation CD under the same name. As Shakur explains it the CD was created in order to motivate, inspire, and challenge Black People to "Dare 2 Struggle" against all of their obstacles. He also recorded a radio PSA for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign, encouraging reading of books about Tupac.

Shakur has five children including two daughters (Sekiywa and Nzingha) and two sons (Mopreme, Chinua).

In 2006, he released a 10 year anniversary tribute album